“You’re a damned liar!” George said good-naturedly. “You know you never will!”
“Why, I will!” Nebraska solemnly declared. “I’m just waitin’ till I git a chance to settle down…Boy, you shore do write ‘em long, don’t you?”
“Yes, it is pretty long.”
“Longest darn book I ever seen!” Nebraska yelled enthusiastically. “Makes me tard just to tote it roun’!”
“Well, it made me tired to write it.”
“Dogged if I don’t believe you! I don’t see how you ever thought up all them words…But I’m gonna read it!...Some of the boys on the Club know about it already. Jeffertz was talkin’ to me about it the other day.”
“Who?”
“Jeffertz—Matt Jeffertz, the ketcher.”
“Has he read it?”
“Naw, he ain’t read it yet, but his wife has. She’s a big book-reader an’ she knows all about you. They knowed I knowed you, an’ that’s how come he tells me—”
“Tells you what?” George broke in with a feeling of sudden panic.
“Why, that you got me in there!” he yelled. “Is that right!” George reddened and began to stammer:
“Well, Bras, you see----”
“Well, that’s what Matt’s wife said!” Nebraska shouted at the top of his lungs, without waiting for an answer. “Said I’m in there so’s anyone would know me!...What’d you say about me, Monk? You sure it’s me?”
“Well—you see, now, Bras—it was like this----”
“What’s eatin’ on you, boy? It is me, ain’t it?...Well, what d’you know?” he yelled with evident amazement and delight. “Ole Bras right there in the book!” His voice grew low and more excited as, evidently turning to Myrtle, he said: “It’s me, all right!” Then, to George again: “Say, Monk”—solemnly—“you shore do make me feel mighty proud! That’s what I called you up to tell you.”
23. The Lion Hunters
In New York his book got a somewhat better reception than it ‘enjoyed back home. The author was unknown. Nobody had any advance reason to care about what he had written one way or another. Though this was not exactly an asset, at least it gave the book a chance to be considered on its merits.
Surprisingly enough, it got pretty good reviews in most of the leading newspapers and magazines. That is, they were the kind of reviews that his publisher called “good”. They said nice things about the book and made people want to buy it. George himself could have wished that some of the reviewing gentry, even some of those who hailed him as “a discovery” and studded their sentences with superlatives, had been a little more discriminating in what they said of him. Occasionally he could have asked for a little more insight into what he had been driving at. But after reading the letters from his former friends and neighbours he was in no mood to quarrel with anybody who felt disposed to speak him a soft and gentle word, and on the whole he had every reason to be well pleased with his press.
He read the notices avidly, feverishly, and sooner or later he must have seen them all, for his publisher showed him the clippings as they came in from every section of the country. He would take great bunches of them home to devour. When his eager eye ran upon a word of praise it was like magic to him, and he would stride about his room in a delirium of joy. When he read a savage, harsh, unfavourable review, he felt crushed: even though it came from some little rural paper in the South, his fingers would tremble, his face turn pale, and he would wad it up in his hand and curse it bitterly.